DeLay's arc: bulwark to liability

WASHINGTON — Standing before a crowd of applauding House Republicans in the Capitol Hill Club in March, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, inscribed $1.8 million on a giant check and signed his name with the flourish of a game-show host. The tally, representing money to be given to the campaigns of 10 Republican lawmakers, was another cache collected by one of the premier money machines ever to function on Capitol Hill.

It worked simply. On one side of the machine, a hose vacuumed the pockets of large corporations, wealthy individuals and legions of lobbyists on K Street, all instructed by DeLay to contribute only to Republicans.

Out the other side, at some later date, came legislation of interest to many of the donors. Inside the machine, twisting its knobs and pulling its levers, was DeLay, who was unabashed about his pay-to-play philosophy and relentless in enforcing his political rules.

DeLay's tenure in the congressional leadership was marked by an extraordinary record of political accomplishment.

The go-to guy

From Dec. 6, 1994, until last year, the former pest exterminator from a Houston suburb was the go-to guy in the House for legislative favors, perks, committee chairmanships and election cash.

"Tom DeLay and I have had our differences over the years, but he is one of the most effective and gifted leaders the Republican Party has ever known," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, who served in the leadership just below DeLay when the GOP first won a majority in the House. He also is likely to run for DeLay's slot as majority leader.

As President Bush noted recently, when DeLay was in the saddle, the administration's priorities were enacted by the House. Under his prodding, that body became, in effect, a single-party institution, with negligible Democratic influence in its operations, from hearings to appropriations.

But DeLay's leadership was undermined over time by a blurring of ethical lines in the handling of money by his aides and advisers, his personal taste for the lifestyle of the super-rich and his take-no-prisoners approach to political disputes in a town built on compromise. Indeed, in Washington, he was known as "the Hammer" for his tight control of the House and ability to vanquish political opponents.

A lawmaker who cast himself as an icon of moral conservatism, DeLay came increasingly to be regarded as a symbol of special-interest lawmaking. With midterm elections looming, his colleagues began to fear the consequences.

Although DeLay was admonished by the House ethics committee as early as 1999 for retaliating against a trade association that hired a Democrat, for the most part his partisan style was welcomed by Republicans.

Signs of trouble

Not until 2004 did the first major cracks in the DeLay political edifice appear. In three reports, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct rebuked him for asking federal aviation officials to intervene in a Texas political spat, for improperly pressuring a fellow Republican to vote for a Medicare drug bill and for creating the appearance that Westar Energy received special consideration in exchange for campaign donations.

The committee called on him to "temper your future actions to assure you are in compliance" with House ethics rules. But DeLay blamed the rebukes on malevolent Democrats, and his supporters retaliated by ousting the Republican chairman of the committee and tying up its operations in a prolonged dispute over staffing.

More serious damage came from an ethics investigation in DeLay's home state, which led last September to his felony indictment and forced him to step aside temporarily under party rules.

At issue was one of DeLay's more brilliant achievements, hailed by fellow Republicans for solidifying their control of the House: orchestration of a party takeover in the Texas Legislature that led to an extraordinary redrawing of congressional districts and the election of five more Texas Republicans to Congress in 2004.

Charges of DeLay's involvement in money-laundering associated with that state Republican victory in 2002 remain unproven, he has denied wrongdoing and many campaign-finance lawyers consider the Texas case weak.

But his name also has figured prominently in a second ethics investigation, this one in Washington, D.C., under the aegis of a federal task force looking at the links between money and favors associated with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff, whom DeLay once termed one of his "closest and dearest friends," pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion and promised to cooperate with investigators.

Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, pleaded guilty Nov. 21 to conspiracy to bribe public officials and likewise promised cooperation. Prosecutors also are looking at actions taken by former DeLay aides Tony Rudy and Edwin Buckham on behalf of Abramoff's clients.

No one knows where these investigations will lead, and uncertainty is always the enemy of political strength.

Rising in the ranks

DeLay, 58, earned a biology degree at the University of Houston and pursued a political career out of opposition to regulation of the pesticide industry.

He first came to Congress in 1985, but it was not until a decade later that Buckham, Rudy, Scanlon and Abramoff played key roles in DeLay's ascent in the Republican hierarchy, a rise underpinned by the steady infusion of corporate cash into GOP political campaigns.

DeLay was blunt about his emphasis on fundraising from the outset: He and Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas, each promised in a leadership meeting before the 1994 election to raise $500,000 for party hopefuls, and he traveled to dozens of House districts, cementing close ties to many challengers who won office that fall.

After the 1994 elections, when many like-minded conservatives swept into the House, DeLay capitalized on his fundraising prowess in a successful race for majority whip against Rep. Robert Walker, R-Pa.

Walker, who was Newt Gingrich's best friend in the House and an expert in parliamentary maneuvering, was initially favored to win the contest. But DeLay had distributed so much money that he overtook Walker by the end of the race, securing the votes of 52 of the 73 freshmen in the class of 1994.

Walker later decried what he considered the excessive influence of fundraising committees such as DeLay's Americans for A Republican Majority (ARMPAC), which, he said, caused the outcome to be determined by money, not talent.

But his colleagues largely shrugged. In the next decade, they accepted nearly $4.5 million in contributions from ARMPAC, which in turn drew its money heavily from tobacco, energy, railroad and communications interests.

Throughout his tenure in the leadership, DeLay frequently traveled to golf resorts and costly hotels for meetings with lobbyists at ARMPAC's expense; he also preferred traveling on corporate jets instead of commercial airlines.

But DeLay was not selfish; he earned the gratitude of many colleagues by extending the same perquisites to them in exchange for their votes.

Traveling man

According to his former colleagues, DeLay's office functioned at times like a hotel concierge, arranging corporate jets, private cars, fishing trips, and other expense-paid travel during congressional breaks, key votes, and party conventions, all financed by wealthy donors with interests before Congress.

DeLay's travel has played a role in his undoing, as investigators have begun delving into the circumstances of trips DeLay took with Abramoff to Moscow in 1997 and to Scotland and London in 2000.

The first trip preceded an unusual million-dollar donation to a group linked to DeLay, which former associates say originated with Russian energy executives; on the second trip, Abramoff and Buckham — who were both registered lobbyists — used their credit cards to pay for some of DeLay's expenses, in apparent conflict with ethics rules.

DeLay said he was unaware of the precise financial arrangements for the travel.